Plenty of grit, but to what end?

Wesley Snipes/Don Cheadle, strong work in a flawed effort.

One cop (Ethan Hawke) needs money to buy a house. Another (Don Cheadle) wants a promotion that he believes will liberate him from the morally murky world of undercover work. A third cop (Richard Gere) maintains a safe distance from conflict because he has only seven days remaining until retirement.

Such is the setup for director Antoine Fuqua's Brooklyn's Finest, a cop drama that commits a variety of big-screen felonies. Among them: The motivations given each character in a script by Michael C. Martin and Brad Caleb Kane tend to be over simplified, and a farfetched ending – bathed in the expected bloodshed – makes the entire movie feel contrived.

Fuqua, who directed Training Day, would seem the ideal candidate for getting the most out of Brooklyn's Finest, but the movie doesn't feel as if it has an overriding sense of purpose. Brooklyn's Finest doesn't fulfill the demands of either art or entertainment; it explores the down-and-dirty world of cops who've been tempted by corruption and, in some cases, have indulged their least honorable impulses, but it seems more interested in finding pumped-up drama than in unearthing any kind of truth.

A strong cast is supplemented by an appearance by Wesley Snipes, in what's being touted as a comeback performance. Snipes acquits himself well as a gangster who has won his release from prison thanks to an assist from Cheadle's character. Cheadle's Tango owed Snipes' Cas a favor, so he helped his buddy find a slick attorney who knew how to open slammer doors.

Cheadle gives his usually strong performance as a detective who's living with too much moral ambiguity. Hawke pushes himself to jittery extremes as Sal, a detective who's driven to do better by his family. But Gere seems wooden in this context; he's playing a cop with nothing in his life but vague retirement plans, an undistinguished record and a relationship with a hooker (Shannon Kane). (If you want to see Gere really handle the role of “dirty” cop go back to Mike Figgis' Internal Affairs (1990). Maybe Gere's better at police work in Los Angeles than in NYC.)

The supporting cast can't be faulted, although Lili Taylor is largely wasted as Sal's wife, a woman who's pregnant with twins. Will Patton plays the cop who keeps promising Cheadle's character a promotion, but never seems to deliver. And Ellen Barkin shows up in a quasi-comic role as a foul-mouthed federal agent who seems interested only in advancing her own career. Say this: Barkin refuses to get lost in an atmosphere where testosterone is the hormone of choice.

Watching Brooklyn's Finest is like watching lots of urban ingredients boil in a pot without ever figuring out exactly what dish is being cooked. The movie has plenty of hard-core urban dynamism, but – in the end (and especially at the end) – doesn't have much to show for it.

Burton meets Lewis Carroll: Call it a draw

Alice will fall down the rabbit hole and meet ....Johnny Depp, who plays the Mad Hatter.

Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland is richly imagined and abundantly creative, so much so that it's impossible to watch this version of Lewis Carroll's classic without acknowledging the extraordinary amount of effort that must have gone into it. But the hard work of the filmmaker probably isn't the sort of thing you want to be thinking about on a trip to Wonderland, referred to as Underland in Burton's edition.

In adapting Carroll's tale for the screen – in trendy 3D, of course – Burton has brought his considerable powers to a story that has been given a contemporary gloss, picking up elements from Carroll and putting them through a Disney Cuisinart that turns Alice's story into a increasingly boisterous tale of female assertion, Alice as an avatar (you'll pardon the expression) of newfound identity.

Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is on a search to discover her true self – the right Alice as opposed to the Alice who is not quite the character the tale requires. The script by Linda Woolverton takes Alice on a second trip to Wonderland. She doesn't remember the first, which occurred when she was much younger. This time, Alice -- now 19 – tumbles down the rabbit hole in an attempt to flee a marriage proposal from the obviously dull Hamish (Leo Bill), a young man notable only for his pinched face and troubled powers of digestion.

Once in Wonderland, Alice navigates us through Burton's effects, beginning with the rotund duo, Tweedledee and Tweedledum (voiced by Matt Lucas). The mix of live actors and CGI creations proves reasonably seamless, but CGI trumps most of the live performances with Stephen Fry giving sly voice to the Cheshire Cat, a creature that can dissolve into thin air at a moment's notice, and Alan Rickman bringing Yoda-like wisdom to Absolem, the Blue Caterpillar who dispenses advice while puffing on his hookah. (Yes, we're talking smoking in a Disney movie, great puffy clouds of it.)

Burton has concocted a visual cornucopia, but among his human actors, only Helena Bonham Carter really stands out. Bonham Carter's Red Queen has a large head and a mercurial temperament that catapults her from unrestrained conviviality to off-with-their-heads fury. Bonham Cater essentially steals the show, although she's not always walking away with a grand prize.

Not every one fares quite as well. A one-note Crispin Glover shows up as the scowling Knave of Hearts. And Burton stalwart Johnny Deep portrays the Mad Hatter.

Part of the reason that Depp and Burton have worked so well together over the years (from Edward Scissorhands to Sweeney Todd) involves Depp's ready-for-anything attitude. But I quickly grew tired of him as the Hatter, a character that doesn't allow for much variation, a problem that troubles all of the actors and totally undermines Anne Hathaway, who's cast as the White Queen. Hathaway does her best to appear as if she's floating through every scene, a woman untethered from any earthly moorings. She's so detached, I half wondered whether someone hadn't filled her head with helium.

The story moves toward a battle between Alice and the fierce, dragon-like Jabberwocky, and although there are some nice humorous touches (The Red Queen using a pig as a footstool, for example), the movie embeds most of its madness in its visual fabric instead of teasing it to the surface where it belongs.

Missing from Burton's movie – which proves intermittently enjoyable -- is the tipsy Carroll quality that knocks us off our moorings. The story is told in straightforward fashion that misses the feeling that we've been shoved into a world that's ready to turn our heads inside out. I never felt as if Burton had pulled off the ultimate head trip, even when he was skillfully shifting perspectives as Alice grew in size or turned into a shrunken miniature version of herself.

Put another way: I'd say Burton has met Carroll, and although both survive the encounter, neither comes out entirely victorious by the time Alice in 3D Land crosses the finish line.

Polanski lowers his voice in 'Ghost Writer'

Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor, nose-to-nose.

In Shutter Island, director Martin Scorsese decided to bring his considerable technique front-and-center. Scorsese pushed his ingredients into a hyper chamber of thrills where extravagant visual gestures become the norm. In his new thriller The Ghost Writer, Roman Polanski -- another top-ranked director -- follows a different route.

Although there are terrific images in The Ghost Writer – beginning with the opening shot of a ferry docking at a Massachusetts beach town – Polanski doesn't call attention to his cinematic virtuosity. He's telling a story, and if the story eventually bogs down in its own intricacies perhaps Polanski should be forgiven. The Ghost Writer is quietly involving, a thriller that doesn't aim for the usual adrenalin-fueled shocks.

Adapted by Robert Harris from his own novel, The Ghost Writer tells the story of a writer (Ewan McGregor) who's hired to ghost write the memoirs of a British prime minister (Pierce Brosnan). Brosnan's Adam Lang was forced to resign as the result of torture-related disclosures. Lang evidently turned suspected terrorists over to the CIA, an action that caused a furor in Britain.

After leaving office, Lang (an attractive Tony Blair-like figure) moved to the U.S., becoming a Massachusetts residentin exile. McGregor's character – referred to only as The Ghost – is hired after another ghost writer dies, an apparent suicide.

Just about everyone in the movie knows more than The Ghost, who gradually begins to understand that he may be in danger. The Ghost must weave his way through a web of intrigue and deception as he tries to uncover the truth about a former Prime Minister who can be charming but who also indulges a volatile temper.

McGregor, whose recent work in movies such as Amelia and Angels and Demons has been disappointing, pulls off a neat trick: He's playing a writer whose career has been subordinated to the lives of others. The Ghost may be well paid, but there's no public recognition of his existence. He's an authorial invisible man.

Brosnan ably portrays a beleaguered public man living in enforced privacy with his wife, the terrific Olivia Williams, and an assistant (Kim Cattrell) who may be more than a workmate. Timothy Hutton has a nice small turn as Lang's cagey lawyer, and Tom Wilkinson proves especially sturdy as a Harvard professor encountered by The Ghost toward the end of the movie's second act.

There are some great touches here. Polanski, who shot the film in Germany, gives the Langs an ultra-contemporary house that looks like a seaside bunker on the outside and yields to modern sterility on the inside. Williams makes intelligence look sexy, and we feel as if we -- like the title character -- have gained access to the private world of a once-important man who has resurfaced in disgrace. Lang is about to be charged by the World Court with crimes against humanity.

Polanski seems drawn to characters who are in over their heads, and the movie – particularly in its final scenes – does an admirable job of showing the disconnect between the earnest sobriety of public displays and the sloppy realities of private life.

During a long-ago film course, I watched scenes from Polanski's breakthrough Knife in the Water over and over again. The professor discussed the ways in which Polanski created tension and he certainly hasn't lost his touch. He has a great capacity for inwardness and concealment -- if not for selecting the best material.

Still, The Ghost Writer pulls us into its orbit, a whirlwind of intrigue and corruption that destroys anything caught in its wake, and there are bits and pieces that any director would envy: the tension that accompanies a set piece in which The Ghost tries to elude men who follow him onto a ferry or the intentionally obvious way Polanski plays a waiting game with the audience, following the progress of a note as it's passed from hand-to-hand in one of the movie's final scenes. At its best, Ghost Writer's makes us feel as if we're eavesdropping on conversations that we're not supposed to hear.

Whether Polanski's endlessly publicized, on-going legal troubles limit the movie's appeal remains to be seen, but The Ghost Writer shouldn't be dismissed. Here's a movie in which it's not the characters who are seductive, but the movie itself. Polanski's gift is one of insinuation and guile. I guess we shouldn't be surprised, then, that The Ghost Writer becomes less persuasive as its secrets are revealed.

A great trilogy about pervasive corruption

Andrew Garfield as a reporter in 1974.

Paddy Considine squares off with Sean Harris in 1980.

David Morrissey plays a troubled cop in 1983.

I don't know when I've seen a movie as devastating as The Red Riding Trilogy, a three-picture adaptation of four novels by British author David Peace. The three movies – which open Friday at the Starz Denver Film Festival – originally were made for British TV and total five hours in length.

Each of the films has a different director, each was shot in a different format (16 mm, 35 mm and digital video) and each takes place in a different year (1974, 1980 and 1983). All the stories are set in Yorkshire, England's largest county. Each film also involves the notorious Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer who was convicted in 1981 after murdering 13 women during a five-year period beginning in 1975.

If all this sounds complex, so be it. The Red Riding Trilogy is one of the densest, most complex movies you'll ever see. On top of that, the thick Yorkshire accents of many of the characters challenge the American ear, and, on occasion, make one long for clarifying subtitles. But if you stick with the three movies, you will, I believe, encounter a masterpiece of darkness, an unremitting chronicle of corruption at every level of society.

Don't let the Yorkshire Ripper connection mislead you. The Red Riding Trilogy is not a whodunit nor does it peer into the twisted mind of a brutal serial killer. It is a portrait of Yorkshire (and, alas, of the human heart) during the course of 10 tumultuous years.

The movie is held together by a mantra recited by various corrupt officials. “This is the North where we do what we want.” Revelations about police corruption, individual intimidation and the hellish nature of ordinary life are hardly shocking -- not anymore. The Trilogy shocks us to the core because of the depth and the extent to which it follows its dark trail of evidence and accusation. The movie makes us feel as if we've caught a disease from which we can't recover, one that's slowly but inevitably fatal.

Throughout the three movies there are overlaps, recurring characters and references to previous events. Eventually, you begin to pick up the movie's rhythms, but you also know that each film represents a kind of dare: Keep up or fall hopelessly behind. Like many films that have plunged into dark, violent waters, The Red Riding Trilogy finds an eerie poetry of the underside, something that elevates pulp into art.

A rude, anti-lyricism anchors much of the dialogue, a disturbing directness that reveals the intentions of the characters, almost all of whom are up to no good. These are not epic villains with larger-than-life ambitions. They're cops you might meet at the local pub. They're also torturers and deviants who are motivated by the most naked forms of greed, men of appetite.

It's probably impossible to summarize the three films properly, but it's worth a fleeting try. The first film, directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Toni Grisoni (who wrote all three movies), centers on a journalist (Andrew Garfield) who's assigned to cover the Ripper murders.

Garfield's Eddie Dunford – a reporter for The Yorkshire Post – is no Bob Woodward. Initially bumbling, ill-informed and over confident, Dunford gradually learns the truth about the cops with whom he deals; he's pulled into a world that seems to revolve around a powerful local businessman (Sean Bean) who wants to build a shopping mall. He also meets the mother (Rebecca Hall) of one of the girls who has disappeared. He falls for her, but don't expect wine and roses.

The hard truth: When people believe they can do what they want and get away with it, a lot of other people will suffer.

So, no, Eddie Dunford is no hero. It falls to Eddie to deliver the film's sour opening line, which defines the worst of journalistic impulses: “Little girl missing. The pack salivates.”

Because the movie is set in 1974, the characters are incessant smokers. The images concocted by cinematographer Rob Hardy have the feel of smoke-clogged rooms that leave you gasping for breath. I haven't smoked in more than 25 years, but watching these characters puff away summoned some sort of residual nicotine memory from deep within my cells, the inescapability of old addictions.

And there are moments of great cinematic prowess. When Eddie decides that his relationship with Paula should go beyond reporter and source, he pauses at her front door. He knocks. She approaches, a hazy figure behind smoked glass. We know in our bones that once she opens that door and Eddie walks through it, nothing ever will be the same for either of them. Of course, the door opens. Of course, Eddie walks through it. The weight of inevitability seems to push Eddie toward his destiny.

Film two, set in 1980, revolves around a cop. Assistant Chief Constable of the Manchester Force Peter Hunter (Paddy Considine) is sent to Yorkshire to learn why the county's cops have bungled the Ripper investigation. By now, we know that setting foot in Yorkshire is a bit like sinking into quicksand; the more you flail, the worse it gets. But Hunter seems confident, competent and honest. So what if he once had an affair with Helen (Maxine Peake), an investigator he's chosen to work with him on the case? So what if his wife miscarried while he was on duty? We're inclined to trust Hunter with his gloomy sense of calm and face full of disappointment.

Directed by James Marsh (Man on Wire), the second film seems more stylish than the first, perhaps because it has been shot in 35 mm. But it takes us even deeper into Yorkshire corruption and makes clear the importance of a ferret-faced Yorkshire cop named Bob Craven (Sean Harris). Craven is an adept torturer and merciless rat who may or may not be overestimating the power that his own brutality gives him. He's an unashamed sadist.

In the final film, directed by Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie) the undercurrents of the plot begin to rise to the surface, coming into focus as much as a movie like this will allow anything to come into focus. The story now centers on Maurice Jobson (David Morrissey), a cop with a drooping mustache and a conscience to match. And be sure of this: A conscience is the last thing anyone needs on the Yorkshire police force of this movie. John Piggot (Mark Addy), a lawyer, also looms large in this portion of the story. Piggot hardly epitomizes legal success, but he's likable and has a taste for R&B. Reluctantly, he finds himself pushed in the right direction.

Given five hours of movie, it's neither possible nor desirable to flesh out every detail. The finale of the first movie echoes with the kind of violent retribution that concluded Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. The scenes of torture in the basement of a Yorkshire precinct house will make you wince, and there are so many well-drawn minor characters I couldn't keep track of them all: The soft-spoken but creepy Reverend Laws (Peter Mullan); the manipulative male prostitute BJ (Robert Sheehan) or the various Yorkshire police officials who view the world as theirs to plunder.

I've heard it said that these movies can be viewed as stand-alone dramas. See one and leave. I don't think that's true. The Red Riding Trilogy is an all-or-nothing proposition. Whether you see it now or wait to watch it on DVD, see it. As you watch, you'll find yourself making connections and coming to small realizations. A character that you've seen before will crop up, and you'll scurry across the landscape of recent memory, trying to identify his or her position in the drama. Eventually, a cumulative power begins to gather.

The Trilogy offers as complete a vision of a shabby, fallen world as anything I've ever seen. It's one hell of an accomplishment -- a worldview as well as a movie. Abraham Lincoln may seem an odd person to quote at this point, but I'll twist a thought from Lincoln's first inaugural address and say that The Trilogy makes us wonder whether the better angels of our nature haven't grown weary of us and permanently flown the coop.

Handicapping Oscar: My predictions

I look for Hurt Locker to blow up big on Oscar night.

Jeff Bridges should have no trouble taking home Oscar gold.

It pays to be bossy, if you're Sandra Bullock.

It's time for the fun game the whole family can play. We're talking about that international pastime and water cooler preoccupation known as Predict the Oscars. I try not to make too big a deal out of this annual exercise because the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences already makes a big enough deal out of the way it pats itself the back.

Besides, like just about everything else, Oscar has suffered from a bit of deflation. No matter how much the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tries to hype Oscar, the program never will regain all of its luster. Why? For one thing, Oscar once provided a rare opportunity to observe movie stars in unscripted moments. In era of TMZ and a zillion other compulsive chroniclers of celebrity behavior, that possibility now seems old hat. The entertainment press has dragged the gods down off Olympus and, in many cases, the gods have been more than happy to participate in their fall – all in search of attention in an entertainment marketplace that's more crowded than a 19th century tenement.

To make matters worse, Oscar follows on the heels of a growing parade of previously televised award shows. It's still the big enchilada – the gold standard of awards – but by now its nominees have been seen on as many podiums as some hack Congressman up for re-election. I wish Oscar had shown its face prior to the Winter Olympics, not after. If the Academy had waited much longer, it could have given out the Oscars along with a generous helping of Easter eggs.

Award weariness aside, it falls to critics to predict the outcome of a race that has limited capacity to take our breath away – unless an obvious shocker jolts the proceedings, say, District 9 beating both The Hurt Locker and Avatar for best picture.

So here are my predictions in the major categories in a year in which I believe Oscar will spread its largess among a variety of pictures, most of them deserving. Tune in Sunday to see whether I'm in tune with Oscar or hopelessly out of touch.

BEST PICTURE
What will win: Hurt Locker
What should win: Hurt Locker
Upset possibility: The Blind Side

Commentary: A Blind Side victory could emerge as a result of vote splitting among Up in the Air, The Hurt Locker and Avatar, but I'm thinking that director Kathryn Bigelow's white-knuckle look at an Iraq bomb squad will impress voters because it brought audiences close to fighting men in a war that generally has remained distant to the public. Also, it happens to be the best of the 10 nominated pictures. Avatar wins if the Academy decides that popularity, impressive 3D and a major “wow” factor trump everything else, a distinct possibility, but I'm still predicting victory for Hurt Locker.

BEST DIRECTOR
Who will win: Kathryn Bigelow
Who should win Kathryn Bigelow
Upset possibility: James Cameron for presiding over the complicated technological process that brought Avatar to the screen for a piddling $500 million.

Commentary: The best thing about Oscar (aside from whatever fashion disasters loom) will be the Academy's recognition for Bigelow, a director who happens to be a woman, but who never underestimates the visceral kick that movies provide. She'd be the first woman to win best director. Oh well, it's only taken 81 previous tries for Oscar to get around to recognizing that there are two sexes, and both can operate behind the camera.

I'm betting that Cameron will not prevail because Bigelow already won the prestigious Directors Guild of America award as the year's best director. If you take a second look (or a first if you haven't seen it) at The Hurt Locker, you'll discover that it's gripping, vivid and bolstered by superior performances from the trio of actors who played members of the movie's three-man bomb squad.

BEST ACTOR
Who will win: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
Who should win: Jeff Bridges
Upset possibility: The biggest possible upset would be Jeremy Renner, who played an adrenalin-junkie GI who disarmed bombs in The Hurt Locker.

Commentary: OK, Crazy Heart was a little overrated, but it presents an opportunity to recognize an actor for current efforts and for an impressive body of past work. Conventional wisdom has it that Bridges' talents have been somewhat overlooked by Hollywood. I'm not sure I buy that, but I have no problem with him taking home a statue that I originally thought would go to George Clooney for playing a downsizing specialist in Up in the Air.

The moral of this story: It never hurts to play a drunk, especially one who sings country/western.

BEST ACTRESS
Who will win: Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
Who should win: Carey Mulligan, An Education
If there's an upset: Meryl Streep.

Commentary: Bullock did a fine job in The Blind Side. Her portrayal of the single-minded Leigh Anne Tuohy captured audience hearts and allowed Bullock to dominate a movie about a woman who helped a young black man find his way into a successful football career. Still, the most subtle and revealing performance was given by Mulligan in An Education. She played a bright teen-ager who was seduced by an older man and managed to make it part of a 1960s rebellion against societal limitations on women.
It's a little weird to put Streep into the upset category, but Bullock seemed to have all the momentum going into the Oscar voting, and although Streep's portrayal of Julia Child -- the great popularizer of French cuisine -- in Julie & Julia was strong, she's already recognized as one of our best actresses. If the voters are feeling particularly frisky, they may just want to honor Gabourey Sidibe for playing the title role in Precious. I'm thinking that won't happen.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Who will win: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Who should win: Christoph Waltz
If there's an upset. Christopher Plummer.

Commentary: Waltz's performance as Col. Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds was chilling for its cunning, calmness and eerie politeness. Waltz created one of the scariest screen Nazis ever. The only way he loses is if voters decide that Plummer's wonderfully generous portrayal of Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station and the actor's age – he's 80 – merit recognition. It could happen because like us, the voters have seen all the other awards shows and may just want to assert their independence.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Who will win: Mo'Nique, Precious
Who should win: Mo'Nique
Upset possibility: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Crazy Heart.

Commentary. It's possible that Mo'Nique, a comic by trade, is a one-trick pony when it comes to drama, but the self-justifying speech her character made in Precious was as riveting as anything I saw all year. Mo'Nique tapped into something scary, vulnerable and selfish; she made us understand the monster she was playing without condoning her cruelty.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Who will win: Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Who should win: Mark Boal, The Hurt Locker
If there's an upset: There won't be one.

Commentary: I'm not one of the great fans of Inglourious Basterds, but I'll say this:. Tarantino writes some of the best scenes you'll find in contemporary movies. The opening scene of Inglourious Basterds couldn't have been better, and the movie had other scenes that were almost as good. I don't think Tarantino's brilliant scenes always add up to great movies, but if he wins, I'll be happy for him.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Who will win: Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, Up in the Air
Who should win: The guys who wrote In the Loop
If there's an upset: Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire.

Commentary: I'm a big fan of In the Loop, a scorching satire about the way United States and Britain become involved in a war in the Persian Gulf. But Up in the Air, an adaptation of a Walter Kirn novel, is equally deserving. Reitman served up a mainstream entertainment that has something meaningful to say about the current economic chaos; Up in the Air secured Reitman's place as a director who knows how to entertain with wit and careful observation. I also admire the fact that Reitman refuses to waste his time (or ours) on fluff.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
What will win. Up
What should win: Fantastic Mr. Fox
If there's an upset: The Secret of the Kells.

Commentary: If The Secret of the Kells, which hasn't had much play in the United States yet, were to win, it would mark of the one greatest upsets in Oscar history. I thought Up, which began brilliantly, was a bit overrated, but that puts me in a distinct minority. I loved Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson's extremely amusing adaptation of a Roald Dahl story; it was funny and boasted the best voice work of the year.

BEST DOCUMENTARY
What will win: The Cove
What should win: Don't have a rooting interest this year. If there's an upset: The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.

Commentary: I see the possibility of an upset as extremely unlikely. The Cove was technically impressive and advocated for a good cause, halting the slaughter of dolphins in Japan.

BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM
What will win: The White Ribbon
What should win: A Prophet
If there's an upset look for the Israeli film Ajami to emerge victorious.

Commentary: Michael Haneke's White Ribbon, a look at life in a German village prior to World War I, was slow-moving, creepy and well-acted. It also had the distinctive flavor of an art movie, thanks in part to its stark, black-and-white imagery. The Prophet, about the torments and brutalities faced by an Arab prisoner in a French prison, has more visceral power and made a stronger impression on me. It's a powerhouse of a movie.

So have at it, folks. Your guesses will be as good as mine. And, to tell you the truth, I hope a lot of my predictions are wrong. That will mean that Oscar night proved far more exciting than expected. Meanwhile, I encourage you to delve deeply into categories that I've bypassed. It's time for your predictions, complaints and anything else that's on your minds. Good luck, especially if you're in a pool. These days, every nickel counts.

A comedy that cops out on laughs

Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis are not funny together.

Before I persuaded myself - coerced might be a better word - to write about the new comedy Cop Out, I watched a bunch of Tracy Morgan clips on You Tube. I'd already heard Morgan being interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR, and I'd read an on-line excerpt from the comic's autobiography, I Am the New Black.

I do not consider myself an expert on all things Tracy Morgan, who stars with Bruce Willis in Cop Out. I'd seen only glimpses of Morgan during his stint on Saturday Night Live, a show I gave up on years ago, and I'm not a regular viewer of 30 Rock, either. But what interested me most about Morgan was his unpredictability.

In almost every televised interview, Morgan managed to catch the interviewer off guard, to twist a question to his advantage; i.e., to turn it into a potentially explosive piece of comedy. He'd strip off his shirt and show his generous belly while simultaneously presenting himself as a babe magnet, a Lothario from the hood. He seemed to suggest that something might go terribly wrong, and the interviewer would be unable to control it.

OK, by now you're wondering why I'm rattling on about Morgan and haven't said much about Cop Out, which was directed by Kevin Smith of Clerks, Clerks II, Mall Rats, Dogma, Zack and Miri Make a Porno and other comedies that have won their share of ardent supporters. I'm procrastinating because Cop Out is a colossal disappointment, a formulaic junk yard of a movie that may have been intended as a send-up of every comedy in which a serious white cop (that would be Willis) teams up with a funny black cop (that would be Morgan). Cop Out isn't 48 Hrs. Hell, it's not sharp enough to be called 48 Minutes.

This failure results, at least in part, from a misuse of Morgan. He plays a jealous Brooklyn-based detective who thinks his beautiful wife (Rashida Jones) is cheating on him. Morgan's Paul Hodges reenacts bits from movies, sometimes slobbers on himself and generally plays the oaf to Willis' Jimmy Monroe. By way of contrast, Monroe is a hard-edged cop who's divorced and worrying about how he's going to pay for his daughter's upcoming wedding, a lavish affair with a whopping $48,000 price tag.

Here's where the plot enters, and it's anything but a welcome arrival. In order to pay for the wedding, Willis decides to sell his mint condition Andy Pafko baseball card. Pafko played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951 and 1952. He was in left field when Bobby Thomson's famous home run sailed into the stands, sending the Giants to the World Series and returning the Dodgers to bumhood.

Through a series of awkward contrivances, the baseball card winds up in the hands of a brutal Mexican drug lord named Poh Boy (Guillermo Diaz). Po Boy also happens to collect his own memorabilia, much of it from Mexican baseball. I wish the movie had stopped in its tracks to talk about Poh Boy's collection, but Smith - who's working form a script credited to Mark and Robb Cullin - chooses to insert action into the proceedings.

This leads to another miscalculation. The action - gunplay, car chases, etc. - doesn't mesh well with the comedy, a common problem in this sort of effort. Smith also messes up some of the sight gags. In an intentionally ridiculous attempt to disguise himself, Morgan's character appears in a cell phone costume. You've probably seen it in the movie's trailer, where it wasn't all that funny. On screen, the joke may be even less amusing, extending far beyond its breaking point.

To spice things up, Smith introduces a character played by Seann William Scott, still best known for his work as Stifler in the American Pie movies. Scott plays a thief whose real job is to push the plot along and provide repetitive gags in which he displays a couple of unashamedly juvenile ploys. Say this, though, Scott brings a bit of life to proceedings that sometimes feel weighed down by the deadening shtick that dominates the relationship between Willis and Morgan.

Safe to say that Willis breaks no new ground in Cop Out. I'm no Willis basher. I believe that the guy has real acting chops. Here, though, he relies on the ease with which he commands the camera and a reputation built in a vast library of action movies that saw him tempering violence with irony. The action hero as hipster.

There's more profanity than imagination on display in Cop Out, which doesn't maximize the talents of anyone involved. If this is supposed to be an affectionate, gory and amusing tribute to similar movies, it doesn't work. That would have been a job for a genre freak such as Quentin Tarantino or possibly for Keenen Ivory Wayans (Scary Movie and I'm Gonna Git You Sucka), a comedian who knows something about straight-ahead movie parody.

In Smith's hands, Cop Out resembles a song sung by someone who's tone deaf. The result: More pain than pleasure.

Tough teen times, 'Fish Tank' reviewed

Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender in a moment of normalcy.

Fish Tank -- which tells the story of a hostile 15-year-old who lives in a decaying London suburb -- strikes a perfect balance between distressing content and unobtrusive style. As a result, the movie earns its place as a gritty coming-of-age story about a character thrown into situations that require resources she has yet to develop, perhaps never will.

Director Andrea Arnold draws us inside the world of Mia (Katie Jarvis), a young woman who tries to master hip-hop dancing, sneers at her abusive mother (Kiersten Wareing) and the rest of the world and eventually develops an inappropriate, borderline incestuous relationship with her mom's new boyfriend (Michael Fassbender).

Nuanced where it could have been stark, Fish Tank doesn't so much create a world as explore one that already seems to exist, and it does so without giving Mia any ingratiating tendencies, aside from the fact that she occasionally tries to free an old horse that's tethered to cement block outside a trailer.

Jarvis, who plays Mia, is not a professional actress. What she lacks in technique, she makes up for with a face that's etched in defiance. The jerky, angular movements of Mia's hip-hop dancing suggest the jerky, angular movements of a life that never runs smoothly. At 15, Mia's all anger with a measure of adolescent curiosity thrown in.

The story – also by Arnold – finds its catalyst when Fassbender's Connor shows up. Conner is a hunky, working-class party guy who sometimes acts like a father to Mia and her kid sister (Charlotte Collins). At one point, he takes the family fishing, suggesting a relationship that almost approaches normality. Connor provides a key to Arnold's approach. We know from the outset that he's probably up to no good, but he's not all ogre either. And he clearly doesn't understand how to draw the line between tenderness and desire. Like everyone else in the movie, he's damaged goods.

Some of the plot developments regarding Connor are predictable, and Arnold doesn't seem to know what to do with a kid's anger any more than Mia does. But we certainly begin to understand the perils of living in a small house where mom is usually drunk and where two girls are left to fend for themselves. If the movie's resolution isn't entirely convincing, the chaos of a tough, impoverished environment feels shockingly authentic and tragically real.

Fish Tank isn't an indictment of society nor is it a trumped-up ode to teen redemption; it is, however, a tribute to Arnold's apparent belief that full immersion in a world is worth more than any message. Like Mia, we're left to fend for ourselves.

Scorsese's way creepy 'Shutter Island'

There's no shortage of gloom on Shutter Island.

The quickest way to sum up Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island is with a mild distortion of a cliché every writer is encouraged to avoid: It's one hell of a dark and stormy movie. Drenched in weirdness and flooded with water (in the form of hurricane-driven rains and bobbing seas), Shutter Island makes you feel as if reality is receding as steadily as an outgoing tide.

I can't say I totally believed what was happening in Shutter Island, but that may be part of Scorsese's strategy. In its own creepy way, the movie delves into the elusive nature of reality. It also finds an impressively strange setting in which to conduct its inquiries: A prison and mental hospital for the criminally insane located on a lonely island off the coast of Massachusetts.

Working from an adaptation of a Dennis Lahane novel, Scorsese has devoted his obviously substantial talents to creating an encompassing world of entrapment and dread. True to its name and location, Shutter Island definitely floats away from the mainland. It's always dangerous to speculate about a filmmaker's motivations, but I'm guessing Scorsese wants us to lose our grip.

In his fourth major collaboration with Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio plays U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels. It's 1954, and Daniels and his new partner (Mark Ruffalo) have been summoned to Shutter Island to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Rachel Soldano, a woman who murdered her three children, but who has insisted throughout her incarceration that her kids are still alive.

As they investigate, DiCaprio and his partner are met with a series of confounding revelations. First off, the island seems escape proof. Soldano vanished while locked in her room. Orderlies she would have had to pass on her way to any exit claim they never saw her leave. So where the hell did she go?

The always crisp Ben Kingsley plays Dr. Joseph Cawley, the shrink in charge, and Max von Sydow, as severe as ever, portrays another psychiatrist. Von Sydow's Dr. Naehring seems to wield ultimate authority on Shutter Island, a place where prisoners are referred to as “patients” and where lobotomy looms for the most intractable of the island's residents. Cawley insists that he's more interested in helping his patients find a measure of peace than in turning them into harmless, post-lobotomy blobs. Could he be up to something more nefarious?

It should come as no surprise that Scorsese whips up a fair measure of bravura filmmaking. In a brilliant opening, a seasick Daniels and his partner approach the island on a ferry. What we first take as the ferry's fog horn morphs into the musical score in brilliant, ominous fashion. A hurricane that strikes the island is presented with palpable force, and even scenes in which Daniels thinks he's seeing his late wife (Michelle Williams) have an eerie imbalance. The same goes for flashbacks to Daniels' war-time service in which he helped liberate Dachau, the German concentration camp.

It's difficult to think of a recent movie that has made such distinctive use of music. I was conscious of the music – normally not a good thing – but it began to feel like one more element in the environment of dislocation that Scorsese successfully creates. With a potent assist from musical director Robbie Robertson, Scorsese makes use of lots of contemporary classical works from notables such as Krzysztof Penderecki, whose music (The Dream of Jacob, I think) will give you a major case of the willies.

If you're looking for some previous movie references you'll find evocations of Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock. And Dante Ferretti's production design – particularly for the hospital's dreaded Ward C – virtually defines the world “dank.”
Although the filmmaking in Shutter Island, which is based on a novel by Dennis Lahane, is as good as you'd expect and DiCaprio offers Scorsese an able assist, the movie suggests more than it's ultimately able to deliver. The payoff doesn't match the promise, and the story – which occasionally seems to be stumbling in the island's wilderness – begins to feel as if it's taking too long to find its way to a conclusion you may at least have glimpsed before it actually arrives. The ending? Well, we'll talk later.

Shutter Island poses a question that's wedded to the surface of things: Is seeing really believing? Scorsese makes us wonder, and keep on wondering after we've left the theater, but he doesn't dig deeply into the most perilous corners of the human heart nor does shake us to the core.

Think of how you felt after watching Taxi Driver or Raging Bull, and you'll know exactly what I mean.

Short takes on the weekend's movies

OSCAR SHORTS CHAMPION CREATIVITY
The Oscar shorts program that unspools at the Chez Artiste this weekend is a typically mixed bag in which the animated features surpass the live-action shorts in interest and creativity. Of the live-action selections, the two most powerful are Kavi, a story of a boy whose father's debts force him into a life of servitude, and The Door, a short about the human repercussions of Chernobyl. If I had to vote for a short in the animated category, I'd be a bit of a loss, but I'd probably settle on Logorama, a zany send-up of corporate ties in Hollywood, action movies and product placement. The shorts program is a worthy endeavor for two reasons. It will give you a solid basis on which to make Oscar picks. Second – and more important – it reminds you of how much can be accomplished within a relatively short amount of screen time. In Kavi, which lasts 19 minutes, at least three characters are clearly defined and an entire world of impoverishment and suffering is depicted. I'm not sure it wouldn't be beneficial for some established directors to make short films once in a while; it might help them remember important things about the economy of expression.

'HAPPY TEARS' TRIES TO MOVIE IN TWO DIRECTIONS

No cheers for Parker Posey, Elen Barkin and Demi Moore.
Mitchell Lichtenstein's first movie, Teeth, was a cult hit that launched at a Sundance Film Festival of several years back. In dealing with the vagina dentata myth, Lichtenstein – son of painter Roy Lichtenstein – served up a mixture of gore and satire that proved funny in a wincing sort of way. Lichtenstein returns to the screen with Happy Tears, a movie about two sisters (Parker Posey and Demi Moore) attempting to cope with their increasingly demented father (Rip Torn). Complicating matters is Dad's crackhead girlfriend, a deglamorized Ellen Barkin. Dad tries to pass Barkin's character off as his nurse, but the ruse doesn't work any more than the movie. Moore – also deglamorized for the occasion -- portrays the more level-headed of the two sisters, and Posey does an all-too-typical Posey turn: She's the snide, out-of-touch sister. Happy Tears' mixes bizarre comedy and serious drama proves mostly indigestible.

DARWIN PIC FAILS TO EVOLVE INTO GREATNESS

I'd been looking forward to director Jon Amiel's Creation, the story of the torments undergone by Charles Darwin (Paul Bettany) as he struggled to finish On the Origin of the Species. Had Amiel done nothing other than direct the British TV version of Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective, it would have secured him a place in my pantheon of favorites. Generosity leads me to consider Creation a forgivable misstep that suffers focuses on Darwin's domestic life. Based on a biography by Randal Keynes, the movie follows Darwin's emotional progress as he attempts to come to grips with the death of his oldest daughter Annie (Martha West). He's also dealing with the staunch faith of his wife (Jennifer Connelly), a woman whose God-centered world will be shaken to the core by the theory of evolution. Bettany gives a touching performance, showing Darwin to be a tender if troubled father, but expected something more rigorous. Amiel bravely tries to turn an intellectual story into an emotional one, but the attempt proves only partially successful.